Category: Livejournal

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The Forgotten Tomb of Felgar the Goblin King

Two buddies of mine–Stan! and Hyrum Savage–have started a new company called Super Genius Games and you can check out one of their newest products for free! (A very good price.)

The Forgotten Tomb of Felgar the Goblin King has a catchy ring to it as a title and the concept is something I heartily approve: an adventure without mechanics. It’s part of their “One Night Stand” series of adventures: little scenarios that can be run in a single night. Because the adventure doesn’t have any mechanics, it requires a little bit of prep on the part of the GM, but all the hard thinking is done for you. Look up the stats for the monsters in your favorite fantasy game (GURPS, BRP, Burning Wheel, Houses of the Blooded, or something even more obscure) and slap some numbers on the beasties. Voila! You’ve got instant adventure.

It’s kind of like baking an instant cake. All you have to do is throw in the egg.

Step 1: Click on the image above.
Step 2: Sign up for an RPGNOW account (also free)
Step 3: Download the adventure
Step 4: Provide numbers
Serves 3-6 players with beginning characters.

I read through the adventure and it has a promising beginning. Of course, I’d add stuff to it to make it more Wicked.

The adventure is certainly worth the price and it comes with a bunch of cool stuff to help you run it. In addition to the GM Map, there are a series of “tiles” that detail each section. You can use them as you see fit. The tiles are in full color, very detailed and damn pretty. Get yourself some colored markers and you’ll have yourself one highly useful GM utility.

The adventure also comes with cut-out stand ups for the monsters. Also very pretty and very useful (especially if you are playing The World’s Most Complicated Board Game).

For free, I was expecting much less. What I got impressed me much. Not just because Stan! and Hyrum are friends (they are) but because my friends always surprise me.

Give them the opportunity to surprise you, too.

(Note to Stan! and Hyrum: when I run your adventure, the players will be the goblins trying to protect their dead king’s tomb from dirty, nasty, filthy grave robbers. I thought you might appreciate that.)

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TONIGHT!!!

 

Setlist from last night’s show:

Lucinda
Hoist That Rag
Come On Up to the House
Jesus Gonna Be Here
November
Black Market Baby
Rain Dogs
Trampled Rose
Goin’ Out West
Murder in the Red Barn
Anywhere I Lay My Head
Cemetery Polka
Get Behind the Mule
Eyeball Kid
Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis [TW on piano]
Picture in a Frame [TW on piano]
Invitation to the Blues [TW on piano]
Innocent When You Dream [TW on piano]
Lie To Me
Chocolate Jesus
Make It Rain

Way Down in the Hole
God’s Away On Business
Time

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Play Dirty: Power to the Players

I was in the kitchen, making dinner, listening to the Game Geeks, when I heard someone ask this question…

“How do I make sure my players don’t get too powerful too fast?”

I heard that and I just had to write a Play Dirty episode. And instead of writing it, I just talked it.

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Factcheck.org: McCain and Katrina

(entire article)

McCain was asked by a New Orleans reporter why he voted twice against an independent commission to investigate the government’s failings before and after Hurricane Katrina, and he incorrectly stated that he had “voted for every investigation.”

McCain actually voted twice, in 2005 and 2006, to defeat a Democratic amendment that would have set up an independent commission along the lines of the 9/11 Commission. At the time of the second vote, members of both parties were complaining that the White House was refusing requests by Senate investigators for information.

The McCain campaign accused the Obama campaign of “tired negative attacks” for pointing out and documenting McCain’s gaffe.

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Factcheck.org: Obama’s Inflated Health “Savings”

(entire article)

Obama says his health care plan will garner large savings – $120 billion a year, or $2,500 per family – with more than half coming from the use of electronic health records. And he says he’ll make that happen in his first term. We find his statements to be overly optimistic, misleading and, to some extent, contradicted by one of his own advisers. And it masks the true cost of his plan to cover millions of Americans who now have no health insurance.

  • Obama cites a RAND study that found widespread use of electronic health records could save up to $77 billion a year in overall health care spending. But the study says that level of savings won’t be reached until 2019, when it projects 90 percent of hospitals and doctors would be using electronic records systems.

  • Much could be done to speed up the adoption of electronic record-keeping. But experts, including the lead researcher on the RAND study, are extremely doubtful the U.S. could see widespread adoption in the first term of an Obama presidency, or even a second term. Even a campaign adviser acknowledges Obama’s plan likely won’t reach the full savings potential until five years into implementation, by which time Obama could be out of office.

  • Obama says he’ll “lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year” by investing in electronic health records as well as other efforts. But his adviser tells us that $2,500 figure includes savings to government and employers that could, theoretically, lead to lower taxes or higher wages for families – so we shouldn’t necessarily expect insurance premiums that are “lower” by that amount.

  • The RAND study on which the campaign partly bases its estimates is one of the only reports available on possible cost savings. It may well be correct – no one knows for sure. But it looks at potential savings in an ideal situation and recently has faced criticism.

Many, if not most, health care experts and professionals agree that the use of electronic health records or health IT would have various benefits, in terms of quality of care as well as spending. But doctors and hospitals in the U.S. have been slow to adopt it for several reasons. Whether Obama can effectively bring about widespread adoption and large savings is an open question and not as concrete as his pronouncements imply.

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Eric Wujcik

(I’m coming down with a bad cold, I’m drugged, and I feel more than a little melancholy. Friendly warning.)

My first published work was in Amberzine. “John J Wick.” It’s an awful piece of crap. He published it anyway.

When I list my most inspirational or influential game designers, Eric will be in the top two. I haven’t decided just yet where to place him, but I hope that’s good enough.

While most people will talk about Amber Diceless as the way they will remember Eric, I think the first thing I always think of is another game. A very different game. A game just as fun, but all together… different.

I think of this game.

That was the first time I saw Eric’s name on a game. I remember playing the hell out of that game. I remember loving that game. For all its quirks and strangeness, it was all rather fitting.

And, of course, he’ll be remembered for Amber. The game that caused so much controversy at our game store, in our group, and in gaming. “Diceless? What’s the fucking point?” was the most common response I heard, and when I hear about people tackling second editions, I hear about throwing dice back into the mix, but Eric got something right. Amber doesn’t need dice.

(It needs a slight overhaul since its first publication, but it don’t need no stinkin’ dice.)

Some folks don’t know how to bring The Fun. Eric knew how to bring The Fun to a game. Showed me how to do it. Character creation in TMNT and Amber were a riot. More than half the fun of actually playing. And if you read those two games, you’ll see a lot of the young John Wick in there, soaking it all up.

Eric taught me it was okay to break rules. Even the most sacred rules. A roleplaying game needs dice. Yeah, and tell me why? Just because every other RPG has dice?

Fuck no. Fuck your rules. I’ll make the game I want to play and to Hell with the rest of it!

Without Eric, I would have never put Void Points or Ancestors into L5R. Without Eric, there would be no Drama Dice in 7th Sea. Without Eric, I would have never found the ven.

Without Eric…

He won’t get mentioned in any newspapers or get a nod on the Colbert Report or anything like that… and without any disrespect to the recently departed who meant a whole lot to very many people…

I just want to say that Eric meant at least as much to me as Gary did to you.


Dear Eric,

I heard you were sick and I just wanted to let you know if there’s anything I can do to help, don’t hesitate to ask.
I tried to think of a way to tell you how important you are to me as a gamer and a designer. I thought a very long time and I finally found a way to say it.

Eric, I’m gonna be gaming on Friday. If I never heard of Eric Wujcik, it would probably be something off the rack, but it’s something I wrote myself and it’s going on sale this year with a ton of pre-orders.

I have you to thank for that, Eric. You showed me games could be more than just table top diversions. You showed me they could also be dangerous. You showed me they could also be art.

You showed me I wasn’t alone. And that’s more than I could ever do in return.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

John

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“The Greatest Story in Gaming”

My buddy Matt! writes about what he considers “The Greatest Story in Gaming”… the L5R Clan War.

It’s always very humbling to hear such talk about a thing we were doing by the seat of our pants. Yes, we did catch lightning in a bottle, and yes, subsequent storylines are lessons to be learned for producers (who want to direct) to leave the creative staff alone and let them do their jobs. And yes, over those two years, I lost friendships and damaged myself in ways I’m still feeling now.

But we did catch lightning in a bottle. Damn, did we.

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More Reasons Not to Vote for McCain


I don’t care if you’re a Christian, a Jew, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Scientologist, a Mormon, a Discordian, a worshiper of Thor,  Zeus, or Joe Pesci. Stop trying to revise history to favor your own religion.

The Founding Fathers specifically kept any mention of god, Jesus, the bible and any other religious icons out of the Constitution for a reason: the country they just came from had a national religion: the Church of England. Most of the Founding Fathers were religious dissenters: they didn’t want to belong to the Church of England–an institution with a reputation for murdering and torturing dissenters.

Therefore, no national religion.

Now, you could try to make the argument: “But the FF were Christians!” Fact is, most of them were deists (a codename for “atheist” when being an atheist could get you killed).

And please, tell me exactly where “freedom of speech” is a “Christian virtue?” How about freedom of religion? How about the right to bear arms, the right of free assembly, freedom of press, the right to a speedy trial (the right to any trial at all?)? Please open the Bible and show me where these things are listed–explicitly–from JHVH as rights and liberties?

Go on, keep looking.

Look some more.

I’ll wait.

In the meantime, the rest of us will show you English Common Law (which derives from old Viking property laws and legal procedure), the Magna Carta, Greek Democracy, and Hammurabi’s Code.

(A quick side note: anyone who doesn’t understand the importance of Viking law doesn’t understand the history of Western legal thinking. The Vikings were the first ones to come up with legal procedure. Evidence, testimony, prosecution, defense, jury of peers, all of that. Sure, it was primitive compared to what we have today, but the ECL owes a lot to it.)

Show me where the Bible gives us guidelines on how evidence should be presented. Show me the legal procedure for selecting a jury in Leviticus. Open up Deuteronomy and demonstrate the concept of “innocent until proven guilty.”

No, these concepts were not created by, nor are they exclusive to, Christians. In fact, if you want to look at “Christian legal procedure,” I suggest taking a look at the Salem witch trials, the Inquisition, and the deaths caused by the Protestant/Catholic clashes all through history.

Have Christians adopted principles such as these? Yes, of course they have. But these principles did not originate exclusively in Christian minds. In fact, most of them were first espoused by pagan voices. Greek Democracy. Viking Law. Babylon’s legal codes.

Let’s stop trying to re-write history to favor our own religion, okay? Let’s also stop doing it to win votes from those who would rather believe their own religion’s propaganda than open a history book.